Welcome to the Star Wars forums! For those of you that are unaware, these are the oldest forums in KMC, and in fact are the reason for the existence of these forums at all, it starting off life as a Star Wars board during the run up to Episode II. This legacy is the reason Star Wars has such a distinctive set of areas to itself here. This thread explains certain rules and guidelines designed to try and ensure that these forums remain worthy of such distinctiveness.

At the time of writing, we are at the lead up to the first release of a major Star Wars movie in ten years, the start of a whole new generation or even concept of the Star Wars name, stretching out across all kinds of media, though still with the films at its heart. Star Wars is a wide fandom with a great diversity of interests as to what part of the franchise interest the most and there is accordingly great diversity of opinion about many subjects. As such- as well as the normal rules about showing respect for other posters etc.- we need a few rules in place to keep this a reasonable place for discussion and debate rather than just pointless argument.

WHERE TO POST THINGS

IMPORTANT NOTE: We are currently at a great organisational disadvantage because the admin is not present. Obviously, the new films should have their own section but we cannot do that unless the admin returns. That being so, the Prequel Trilogy films area- as the most recent film discussion board- is being used for all new film discussion. It's not ideal but it's the best of a bad situation, and it is also simple and consistent.

So, here is where things should go:

ALL THREADS ABOUT THE NEW (2015+) FILMS: These go in the Episode I, II and III area (as noted above). By new films, we mean all the cinematic releases starting with The Force Awakens and including the spin-off films such as Rogue One.

Spoiler note: If you are going to post spoilers about upcoming films, always put them in spoiler tags (put [spoiler] at one end when typing them and [/ spoiler] at the other end, without the space after the /). Even with this precaution, it is best not to just post spoilers around in threads unless they form an important piece of information on the thread discussion. Instead, use the spoiler discussion thread

ALL THREADS ABOUT THE ORIGINAL AND PREQUEL FILMS: These go in the 'I, II and III' or 'IV, V and VI' areas as appropriate.

ALL THREADS ABOUT THE TV SERIES (LIKE 'CLONE WARS' AND 'REBELS'): These go in the TV series thread

ALL THREADS ABOUT BOOKS, COMICS, COMPUTER GAMES AND OTHER SIMILAR MEDIA: These all go in the 'Literature and Expanded Universe' section. Like with the 'I, II and III' area, this is no longer actually an accurate name but we cannot change it without the admin. It is better thought of as the 'Books, Comics and Games' area. This has nothing to do with the canonicity of any product (see below).

ALL VERSUS MATCHES: Go inside the 'vs' subforum inside the Literature area. Put them there even if using characters from the films- splitting up the vs. threads is not very practical.

Below are some old ground rules which still apply.

1. Star Wars is one of those things that invites a certain amount of heated debate sometimes. We understand that feelings run strong, but there are limits. We accept a certain amount of rough and tumble in a debate, but once an argument has clearly gone beyond attacking a position and is simply an insult/flamefest, the mods will stop it. Warnings will be issued, and bans if necessary. Focus on what you were arguing about; don't let your distaste for someone else's position get you thrown out by getting more focussed on them than your own argument.

2. If creating a new thread, please do check if your subject has been discussed before. Use the search function to check. If a thread is buried deep or hard to find, a duplicate is not an issue, but it is somewhat vexing to have multiple threads on the same subject on the same page. Just take a look around first!

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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"

This used to be a complex and disputed area; one great advantage of the Disney move is that things have been considerably simplified. Nonetheless, nothing in 'canon' talk is ever clear cut and we need a consistent policy here so that everyone is always on the same page as to what is relevant or not. This is not a quality judgement- it is to stop the absurdity of threads devolving into arguments rendered effectively pointless because the debators are working from completely different premises.

'Canon', broadly speaking, is what counts in a continuity. A franchise can have a vast amount of material produced for it but the owners of the franchise generally restrict how much of that material is considered 'canon'- recognised as being part of their continuity' for all kinds of reasons (different stories may contradict, work given out to other authors may always have been on the condition that it was speculative and not canon, sometimes authors disown bits of their work etc.).

The new Disney/Lucasfilm setup has a relatively simple view for all this. The films, of course, are all canon. The Clone Wars and Rebels tv series are all canon. New material produced under the Disney label is all canon, unless stated otherwise.

All other material- including nearly all of the old Expanded Universe material- is now NOT part of the new canon, instead being given its own label of 'Legends', which becomes an alternate continuity of its own.

By default, then, we will be keeping with the new Disney canon and all threads will normally proceed on that basis. This means that non-canon sources are not viable things to bring into a discussion- for example, talking about continuity related to Vader's fight with Luke in Splinter of the Mind's Eye (a novel so non-canon that it ended up shunted out of pretty much all interpretations of continuity) would effectively be off-topic and the mods would ask you to stop (with common sense involved of course- if talking about it in humour or just to contrast- in short, anything which knowingly appreciates its non-canon status and not using it to try and make a serious point- is fine)

This comes with a few rules:

- If you want to talk about old Legends continuity, no problem- just make this very clear, either in the thread topic or the opening post. It makes a lot more sense to confine such things to the Literature forum though, as the canonicity of the EU to the films was always debatable.

- To repeat what I said before, this is in no way a quality judgement, just an organisational/practical one. What YOU personally consider canon is entirely up to you. What you personally enjoy is entirely your business; if you think the old post-ROTJ EU tells a better stories than the new sequel films, fine. Just remember that there is an objective importance to the official Disney canon and that's where we calibrate from. Just make it clear if you are deviating from that in your own thread/post.

- Don't wield canon like a blunt weapon. It has its shades and, aside from anything else, canon sources can contradict, so there needs to be some room for negotiation/opinion. Also remember that canon sources can make mistakes- the costuming error that meant all the Imperials wore the same ranks in ROTJ really should be seen as just an error and not shoehorned into some weird explanation of a massive rank change in the Empire.

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"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"